Making a living brain transparent and watching its neurons fire without disturbing their function—sounds like science fiction, doesn’t it? Yet the solution may already exist within our own bodies. In a paper published in Nature Methods, a research team led by Kyushu University introduces a new reagent called SeeDB-Live.

Researchers in the Soft Materials Laboratory (SMaL) in EPFL’s School of Engineering have now developed a way to 3D-print HA-based scaffolds using a room-temperature process that harnesses enzymes for fast mineralization.

Miniature organs grown in the lab can organize themselves into complex shapes. But they never do it the same way twice, which makes it hard to use these so-called “organoids” to study disease. Now, scientists at UC San Francisco have created a new material that helps organoids grow in a more predictable way.

Now, a team of researchers from Brown University, Rhode Island Hospital, and VA Providence Healthcare has shown progress in restoring two-way communication across a damaged site of the spinal cord.